What’s the whole mint sauce keyring thing about?

Imagine a round beer mat with a picture of something vaguely resembling a sheep. Now put a key ring through it, laminate it and sell it to persons of a quite stupendously weak and mysterious disposition for large sums of money. But with a delectable utter revulsion of your “fans” and customers, and with no regard for any credit crunch or any outward signs of any moral responsibility for delivering something having taken then money, don’t actually deliver it for two years.

What’s a pit zip then?

What a great question. I have managed to get it down to a choice of either Monty Python’s Graham Chapman playing King Arthur, or Diana Rigg when playing Emma Peel.

I think I may pop out today for a blast around Mabie – I’ve been a bit stuck at home these last couple of weeks so it will be good to get out today!

Dumfries isn’t so bad but there was a warning from the 7 Stanes not to go riding due to risk from falling trees. Not too bad where I am as our house is sheltered.

Some crazy photos here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2071633/UK-weather-Britain-battered-winds-151mph.html

Yunki – MrsYunki may want to slip this in your stocking 🙂

Read the reviews – quite grounded!

I was out riding today and it was all a case of trying to time it right. Got back literally within a few minutes of it bucketing down!

What a loo-ser!

Just trying to add some positivity in to the forum!

Wellies! Who needs 5 tens? 😀

Welcome to the Monkhouse! 🙂

Did you see what I did there?

Allways was cool, always will be! 8)

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img029[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

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img014[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

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img038[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

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Prismatic diffraction[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

Starlings at Gretna Green. Will be going again this year soon too!

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December 2nd[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

I am very happy with fasthosts.co.uk and they have fairly good IT support too. I think they may have a special offer on the .com too.

I am signed up, but the profoundness of my musings can’t possibly fit into 140 characters so I stick to my blog and just use it to get updates from a few people really.

Other rumours from a couple of days ago say that three are bust, and two are probably French. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that at least one has gone bust. Who knows?

In the days of the internet boom and our company was making no money at all, the word “monetize” was used a lot. I think it meant we need to make some profit maybe? Or maybe just get some income coming in.

The other side of the coin[/url] 🙂

One word – Elite!

Heh – Castaneda may have been a fraud but I’m certainly not! I know you obviously think you know what the book is about, but on a certain level it is something very different 😀

And my bibliography says it’s non-fiction!

http://simonralli.wordpress.com/bibliography/

Yes, this is my book on kindle and on ePub.

I went down a professional route and had a company called Booknook do the actual creation after I gave them my manuscript. – http://www.booknook.biz

Other people seem to be able to produce their own books no problems, but mine has been produced to professional standards and I felt that I just did not have the coding skills to get it right. I also have contents, a index, and when I did try it myself the book ended up looking terrible.

They have very reasonable rates, especially for my book which was non fiction.

The other thing you will need to do is your own publicity. I have both a blog[/url] and a facebook page (currently 284 members) and word-of-mouth is now beginning to build up, after having had one or two reviews in various places.

Any questions feel free to ask. I have also published the paperback myself on http://www.lulu.com – this is very cheap and they organise the distribution on Amazon.

If anyone wants to read a review there is one here:

http://psypressuk.com/2011/05/19/literary-review-the-shaman-and-snow-white-by-simon-ralli-robinson/

and there are a couple on the Amazon page now.

I totally agree about the motivation and the need to write for a love of writing, or in my case a love for my subject matter. Being an author though can certainly open doors, for example you get invited to speak at events and lecture etc.

My final piece of advance is to look at blogging. This helps get you into the writing experience and will help you form your thoughts. It will also help you build up a following and will help you to become respected in your field and will help you to market your book.

My blog The Transition of Consciousness – http://www.transitionconsciousness.org – has been building slowly but surely, and I am now able to attract guest writers as well as having my own articles there.

It was busier than I expected last Wednesday, augmented by one very fit shift worker and one author and writer needing some fresh air 🙂

I make frikkin lasers

Do you make them for sharks?? Sharks with frikkin laser beams??

Blogger, writer and mid-week biking buddy of Trekster 🙂

You can see much of Santiago itself in just a couple of days really, but then there are some day trips too you can do.

I was there a few weeks ago, and it was nice to see plenty of people cycling. There are a few places you can hire bikes to do a city cycle tour, but you may not want to mid-week with the traffic.

I also did a day trip up into the Andes and am sure I saw a jump that someone had built. On the trip back down there was a group of roadies climbing to 3000m and some of them looked shattered, which given the altitude wasn’t surprising.

I can’t really comment about the rest of Chile or accommodation, as I was over partly on business. Overall in Santiago restaurants are high quality and extremely good value. Much of the rest of the country looks amazing too, and I will definitely be going back next year as my fiance goes there quite a bit for work.

Hilldodger

Are you wanting to buy a drum or to experience it? I will be doing a drumming workshop in London towards the end of january.

What kind of drum are you looking for?

As well as making one which is not so great for the British climate, my synthetic ones are from Remo.

There must be plenty of good shops in SE London but that is not my neck of the woods.

How did you start?

Probably a good starting point is a guided meditation. There are many of these, and it is probably the case of finding one you can related to and really get on with. These have breathing and visualisation exercises and can work very well indeed if you get the right one.

This could help – people have said to me that although they have been doing yoga for years, my drumming has really helped them achieve much deeper meditative states

Just learning some simple breathing techniques will help too.

I think you have given us a link to your actual email message?

What a waste of time clicking on the link 🙂

I was quite lucky in that I went for a ride around 10am and it only started bucketing down in the afternoon. Still had a few offs as I was exploring some new singletrack with lots of slippery roots and toppled off into a ditch where it took me a minute or two to untangle myself from the bike 😳

I have just gone back through this thread and I don’t see that much hostility to the new cafe. This week is more about saying goodbye to the much loved Hub. No need for dramas on this thread really.

The new cafe position was not the decision of the new cafe owners, I think that that was a bit of a lost opportunity in terms of design.

But yes, if they are able to create a great biking atmosphere, and do some good quality cake and coffee and a reasonable price, then good luck to them of course! 🙂

My friend Lucy’s band “Pilgrim’s Way” have been getting some good airplay on that there Radio 2, and they have a folky but funky EP for Christmas

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shining-Gently-All-Around/dp/B00669CQSS/ref=sr_shvl_album_3

Actually davy-g yes, my descent was a combination of your trolley technique on the blue jumps and Trekster giving me more advice on the berms, slowing down before I get into them and then speeding up on the exit. Oh and I am also working on loosening up on the drops too – had an awesome time! I’m still pulling up a little instead of pushing when I forget, but when I remember I am riding much more smoothly, although maybe I didn’t get so much full airtime as the photo clearly suggests 😳

The actual building looked ok, it was more the low location which wasn’t so great. Shame about the Hub. Does anyone know who is running the new cafe? I guess they will need to work quite hard to get business going again.

It was good to see it still fairly busy today, given that it was a little bit of a damp Wednesday.

I don’t think I have had so much fun in ages, ragging down all the berms and jumpy bits 🙂

As for the new cafe, we just didn’t quite get the location as the veranda is in a ditch and has no view or sun at all!

I forgot to add that this Sunday is their very final day if anyone plans to say bye!

In all seriousness, I wasn’t expecting gnar to the power of max, but it did feel quite low budget, or maybe just badly researched. It was as if no one on the program had ever gone mountain biking. It could have been a good opportunity to see some amazing cross country riding.

But as they said at the start of the programme, they only have 2 days in each location, and that obviously is down to the budget, so not much time to organise much and only really time to ride up a hill on a road and then that disused road.

Shame really. Maybe there will be more biking in other programmes. Their commentary was a bit on the dodgy side too but hey ho.

Cos, like, if you were stuck in a lift, that might be a skill you’d want in the person you’re stuck in it with….

How is the engineer going to get out of the lift to repair it then?

I have to say though, it is not quite as good a programme as I had hoped, and the mountain biking didn’t really do the location justice really did it?